Within the last week, two popular BitTorrent sites began blocking
users located in North America: Isohunt.com’s trackers now block users in the
United States; and Demonoid.com blocks users located in Canada.

Starting last week, Canada-based Isohunt posted a notice
on its front page, stating that it has disabled access from users in the U.S.
to the BitTorrent trackers at Torrentbox.com and Podtropolis.com, which are operated
by Isohunt. Isohunt elaborates, “This is due to the U.S.'s hostility towards P2P technologies, and we
feel with our current lawsuit brought by the MPAA, we can no longer ensure your
security and privacy in the U.S.” Isohunt,
which only indexes the torrents posted at other trackers like The Pirate Bay or TorrentBox, then asked U.S.-based users to add and use other, unrestricted
trackers in its search results.

Shortly afterwards, Demonoid.com – also based in Canada –
went offline, and many speculated that the site had either been taken down by
the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), or suffered major server
failures.

With rumors flying, P2P news site ZeroPaid.com
received an e-mail of indeterminate source which confirmed the server
troubles, and that the site was indeed undergoing a rebuild. However, because
the e-mail could not be verified, and Demonoid’s operator “Deimos” never officially
commented on Demonoid’s status, ZeroPaid’s
e-mail was not posted
until today.

Regardless, Demonoid’s tracker was up by September 29, 2007. The website
followed, resuming operations on September 30. Unfortunately, the return has a catch: due to
interference from the CRIA, Canadian users are now blocked from Demonoid’s
website and its trackers.

Instead users are now redirected to a web page with the
following message: “We received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA,
they were threatening with legal action and we need to start blocking Canadian
traffic because of this. If you reside in Canada, [this] is the reason you are
being redirected to this message. Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for
any inconvenience.”

With the rising popularity of BitTorrent, piracy enforcers
are giving the protocol increasing amounts of attention. Recent e-mail
and source code
leaked from MediaDefender indicate that the firm seems to devote the most
attention to BitTorrent, which, according to a widely-quoted
2004 study, accounts for at least a third of all internet traffic.

While
sites like Demonoid and Isohunt appear to have caved in to these pressures,
others choose a defiant path and turn pressure into mockery: The Pirate Bay’s legal threats page posts dozens of
takedown notices and their humorous replies, and MiiVi.org advertises itself as
a “tribute to the fall of MediaDefender,” hosting an open tracker sponsored in
part by The Pirate Bay, Suprnova,
Mininova and others.

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"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." -- Bill Gates